


Between Heartbeats

by avislightwing



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Death Goddess, F/F, POV Second Person, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 12:50:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11162208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avislightwing/pseuds/avislightwing
Summary: No one knows what Nesta experienced when she was in the Cauldron, and no one ever will. She will take it to her grave.A take on Nesta's brush with death, and the way she loves.





	Between Heartbeats

_Thump._

Cold.

You are so cold.

You cannot feel anything besides the cold.

You think maybe you are dead – that maybe the coldness that surrounds you is Death, that she has finally come for you, that the tightness in your throat is her cold white fingers wrapping around it.

It would be fitting for her to kill you with the cold, after you endured it for so many years, after you felt her cold breath on your neck time and again. You were afraid of her, at first. You remember feeling her at your back time after time – only to whirl and to see no one but the winter woods. The snow.

The cold.

 _Thump_.

In the time since, you have become as familiar with her touch as you are with the back of your soft, uncalloused hands. You never told your sisters – they wouldn’t have understood. Not the youngest – she fought against Death, rejected her touch, drove her whiteness away with the warm red of rabbit’s blood and the sun-tanned comfort of a boy’s body. Not the elder, either. She didn’t even recognize when the Lady came to her – deaf to Death’s whispers, wrapped in a blanket of sunshine and optimism.

You are not your sisters. Your sight was opened from the very moment she came to you, eyes like the darkest, icy pond, hair like winter-starved bracken. You did not see her – not as one sees another person. But in her touch, in her breath… she was there.

You have not heard from her in many months, and now here you are, in her arms.

_Thump._

You feel a heavy pressure around your chest. You are blind in this cold void. You don’t even know if you still have body – you think maybe you do not.

You were fighting a moment ago. (Was it just a moment ago?) You know that. You remember your finger, pointing at the man – yet another man who holds the power. Or seems to.

He does not know that he can do nothing to you, for all he has done is placed you in the arms of the one you know best. His days are numbered. You could feel her breath on your neck as you pointed to him – this one, you said, I curse this one in your name.

You trust your Lady. You know she is counting out his heartbeats even now. You don’t know if he recognizes her hands around his neck. You suspect he doesn’t; unlike your sisters, he rejects your Lady in favor of his own frigidity. He has sealed his heart in ice, not realizing that Death knows ice better than anyone. That with barely a word, barely a breath, she could devour his heart and he would die standing.

Your heart is so cold.

_Thump._

It starts to hurt. You have felt this hurt before – the hurt that tears through you the same the days the snow bit your skin, the needle-like teeth of Death’s handmaidens piercing you through, and the days she reached into your chest and spread frost across your heart regardless of the sun warming your sisters, your father.

Father – in this timeless void, your stomach twists at the word. Mother as well. They both abandoned you to Death’s cold arms, not knowing that she was the only one in whom you’d ever find comfort or a measure of safety. For it certainly wasn’t with them.

Your Lady:  father, mother, lover. Eternal.

Like the cold.

_Thump._

The pain increases, as does the pressure on your chest.

She is here with you now, your Lady. Though your eyes are closed, you can see her, floating in the void, hair swirling around her like a cobweb in a storm. She reaches out, caresses your cheek as if in love.

You wonder if you are nothing but a water-swollen corpse now, if this is what Death’s realm is like. But no – your heart still beats.

For now.

_Thump._

You want to call to her. You want to tell her to stop this terrible drowning, this half-life, to either take you away at last or to release you for now. For you remember:  you cannot leave with her. Not yet. Your sister, the one with the sunshine in her heart, is next, and you do not know if this water is enough to drown that brightness, if your Lady will wrap her hands around your sister’s heart and squeeze until her eyes dim and her mind breaks.

Death is a merciless mistress, and you would not blame her for taking your sister as her own. She will eventually. She will take everything for her own eventually, for she is a greedy lover and will leave nothing untouched by her icy fingers.

But if there is a chance that your sister can stay in the sun for a little while longer, you would be content.

_Thump._

You feel her fingers on your heart now. She is deciding whether or not to take it, to pull it out of your chest and turn it to ice, to take your body in her arms and spirit you away to her realm.

Please, you think.

She pauses. She has not heard this from you before. In former times, you have welcomed her with open arms, gloried in her breath ghosting over your care-starved body.

Please, you say again, knowing she is listening. I ask not for myself. Were it just for me, I would go with you gladly, my Lady.

But my sister. And my promise.

She strokes your heart with those fingers, and a shiver runs through you. When did you regain a body? You do not remember. You know she is considering, remembering your sunlight sister and the vow you made to the man who believed himself above your Lady.

I cannot go with you until I have delivered to you his head and his heart, you say. I owe you that much.

_Thump._

You can sense her nod, her agreement, and her fingers leave your heart. You feel the loss like a knife against your breastbone.

Will she be able to come to you once you leave this place? You do not know. You know that if you leave her now, you chance that you will be leaving her until she takes you in her arms for eternity.

Your friend, your counselor, your lover. You would give that up?

Yes.

Then, in the darkness, in the cold, you feel something even colder:  her lips on yours.

Mine, she whispers to you, mine.

Yes, you say, I am yours.

_Thump._

Her lips move on yours in a harsh, silken promise of things to come. Of when you will be united and your dual hearts will become one.

And in that kiss she gives you two gifts.

The first tears through you like a storm of ice sharp as glass; you would gasp if you had air to breathe. You can feel it pulsing through you like a heartbeat, and you realize it is her power – the power of Death. She gives it to you for protection, for vengeance. Use it well, she tells you, for you now hold a piece of me within yourself.

The other gift she bestows on you, as her tongue slides over your teeth and you wish you could kiss her back, is this:  her blessing.

As you see in the distance a glimmer of light, and her lips leave yours, you hold these two things close. You have your Lady’s heart and her blessing.

You will see her again one day – you know this in every conscious part of your being, you know it like you know yourself, you know it like you know her.

Farewell, sweet one, my princess of carrion, my fire and ice, she says. I will be so close you could feel my breath on your cheek, but you will see me no more until you can be mine forever.

Farewell, you say. Farewell, my Lady.

_Thump._

**Author's Note:**

> Come join me on tumblr as birdiethebibliophile!


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